PREFACE

When one tells a story about a single experience which changed the direction of his or her life, it is usually in reference to a religious conversion. My first department chairman, Vin Rosenthal has from time to time suggested a parallel with my relation to control-theory psychology. In fact, he has opined occasionally that I am a displaced missionary--"preaching" control-theory psychology to an often indifferent academic world. Perhaps he has had a point.

It is certainly true that on one particular Thursday afternoon in 1957 (I forget the month, probably October), I had an experience which, as far as I am concerned, really did change the course of my life. In it, I found an approach to psychology which has felt worth pursuing ever since. Three fellows came to present a lecture at one of the open seminars held on Thursday afternoons at the University of Chicago Counseling Center, where I interned. I had been a somewhat indifferent graduate student in my basic studies up to this point. Not that I was uninterested in them. I have always especially revered the core topics in psychology--learning theory and developmental theory--in the opinion that there is nothing as practical as good theory. However, I had not been satisfied with the views of these subjects which I had been offered up to that point, and consequently I had been unable to invest much energy in mastering the explanations of behavior put forth in them.

That 1957 lecture "opened my eyes" and filled me with an excitement about the underlying nature of human behavior which has never left. The material presented was subsequently published as Powers, Clark, and McFarland (1960a and 1960b), and, of course, was the initial statement of the views presented in this volume.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Many people have contributed to the motivation and the ideas in this book. First, I have to thank Bill Powers, Bob Clark, and Bob McFarland for introducing me to their view, and for their perseverance in donating the time and energy required to launch and keep the feedback theory alive until it could gain an audience. I also want to acknowledge their generosity over many years in many personal ways, including the opportunity Bob McFarland provided me, through an appointment at VA Research Hospital in Chicago, to learn the theory from him and Bob Clark.

Thanks are due Bill for the many hours he has given to helping my students, and those of other academics in the Control Systems Group, understand the control-theory approach, and for showing us how to implement it with workable

Two former students of mine deserve special mention: Pat Alfano, who has come back repeatedly to gain increasing mastery of the theory (cf. Robertson and Alfano, 1985), helped to explain it to other students, and contributed to this book by proofreading and offering editorial suggestions for many of the chapters; and Mike Mermel, who developed many of the computer programs which I have used in research and demonstrations in my early attempts to teach undergraduates control-theory psychology. Many other students have contributed in ways too numerous to mention.

Thanks also are due the series of chairpersons in my department at Northeastern Illinois University, Vin Rosenthal, Vic Dufour, Bob McFarland, and Peggy Condon, and my colleagues in the department, for their support in allowing me the freedom to deliver the control-theory approach in some new courses when it was untried and unheard of, and also to the members of the Control Systems Group who have been active in formulating and communicating the basic ideas, most notably Tom Bourbon, Rick Marken, and Wayne Hershberger, but including many others whose work is identifiable in this volume's references.

I also feel an intellectual indebtedness to Thomas Kuhn for his seminal concept of the scientific revolution. I truly can say that I have drawn support from his description of the processes of crisis, resistance, and eventual paradigm shift at various times when I felt discouraged and considered abandoning what seemed a hopeless investment of energy.

Finally, many thanks are due my wife, Vivian, for her patience and support as I spent hours and hours on control-theory projects which might otherwise have gone into family recreation or enhancing the family income, and Mary Powers, for her unflagging support of Bill's efforts, her own contributions to the development of control-theory thinking in psychology, and her many practical contributions to the organization and conduct of the Control Systems Group and its annual meetings.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

David M. Goldstein is a clinical psychologist, a consultant to various hospitals and training programs, and a pioneer in the development of a truly workable research- and theory-based approach to clinical psychology.

Richard S. Marken was for 12 years a professor of psychology at Augsburg College. He is now a human-factors engineer with The Aerospace Corporation.

Frans X. Plooij is a developmental psychobiologist heading the Department of R & D, Pedological Institute of the City of Amsterdam (Institute of Child Studies). With his wife, anthropologist Hetty van de Rijt-Plooij, he studied infant chimpanzee development at the Gombe Research Center, Africa, and described the evidence of step-by-step development through successive control-system levels consonant with Powers' model, later paralleling these observations on human infants.

William T. Powers is associate editor of this volume and originator of the model presented here. He has authored many articles (see Powers, 1989) and has invented many demonstrations furthering the development of that model.

Richard J. Robertson is editor of this book and professor of psychology at Northeastern Illinois University.

Each author's contributions are his own views. While the editors have exercised a certain amount of stylistic control to slant the exposition toward the intelligent layman and the university undergraduate, no attempt was made to force the various chapters into total harmony or. consistency, other than that which has come about naturally from the common position provided by the basic model.

Richard J. Robertson

Northeastern Illinois University

Chicago, Illinois

January 1990